⬇️ Inside this issue:

• Madelyn proves you don’t need to be a tech nerd to do LER work

• Javier challenges us to rethink when neurodivergence allyship should begin

• Listen to what it really takes to help students find their way back to college

INTERESTING READS

🤖 AI isn’t wiping out most jobs, but it is changing the skills inside them

🎓 Why haven’t digital credentials gone mainstream if we already have the tech?

📈 More workers are turning down promotions to protect their work life balance

🪜 Career growth isn’t always up, and squiggly careers embrace the sideways move

IMPLEMENTATION

LER For Normies: Turns out, LERs aren’t just for nerds

My first Badge Summit was in 2023, right as I was starting my role as Network Director of SkillsFWD. I walked in thinking I knew a fair amount about LERs. Digital credentials and skills-based practices had come up plenty in my workforce development work, so I wasn't exactly starting from zero.

And then the conference started.

People were throwing around acronyms I didn't know and discussing technical concepts that went completely over my head. Everyone kind of sounded like a nerd, and I felt very much like a normie who had somehow missed an important prerequisite course.

Four Badge Summits later, here's what I've learned: you do not need to be the most technical person in the room to lead this work.

In fact, some of the people best positioned to lead LER implementation aren't technology experts at all. They're the people who deeply understand their communities, know the learners and employers they're trying to serve, and have the wisdom to bring in the right people to fill the gaps in their own expertise.

That's important because if we make people believe they need to understand every acronym, standard, wallet, data model, and interoperability framework before they can enter the conversation, we're going to scare away a lot of the exact people we need leading it.

You don't have to know everything. You have to know who does.

My time at SkillsFWD gave me a front-row seat to this. Our team brought in brilliant subject matter experts to support our grantees with pieces of the work that were far outside my own comfort zone, and eventually I realized that wasn't a weakness in the model. That was the model.

Successful implementation isn't about one person becoming an expert in everything. It's about understanding the problem you're trying to solve, knowing what you don't know, and assembling the people who can solve it together.

This year, at my fourth Badge Summit, I wanted to create something for the person sitting in the audience feeling exactly like I did in 2023. I kept thinking about the For Dummies series and how well it makes light of feeling out of your depth while still giving you practical ways to learn something unfamiliar.

So I created LERs for Normies.

It isn't supposed to teach you everything there is to know about LERs. It's meant to help you understand enough to get into the conversation and, more importantly, start doing the work.

Here are a few things I wish someone had told me.

Learn enough LER-speak to ask good questions

The LER space has a language problem. There are acronyms for the acronyms, and people casually drop technical terminology into conversations as though everyone received the same glossary on their first day.

We did not.

The good news is that you don't actually need to understand everything they're saying. You need enough fluency to follow the conversation, recognize what you don't understand, and ask the next good question.

So start there. Learn the basic vocabulary, keep a glossary nearby, and don't be afraid to ask someone to explain something again without the jargon. I promise the LER police will not come for you.

Don't start with the technology. Start with the person.

It's very easy to get sucked into conversations about platforms, wallets, standards, interoperability, and infrastructure because those are tangible things to talk about. But they're not actually the reason any of this matters.

LERs matter because people have skills our existing systems aren't very good at seeing.

Millions of people gain valuable skills through jobs, military service, community training, and non-traditional pathways that never appear neatly on a traditional transcript. LERs create a way to document, verify, and share more of those skills so people can better communicate what they actually know and can do.

So before asking, What technology should we use?, ask a more important question: Whose skills are currently invisible, and what would change if they weren't?

That's a much better place to begin.

Your first implementation steps probably aren't technical

Through SkillsFWD, we identified five key phases of LER implementation: getting started, ecosystem engagement, project setup, piloting, and scaling. And when you actually look at what happens within those phases, something becomes pretty obvious: a whole lot needs to happen before you start worrying about the fancy tech.

Early implementation is largely about relationships and decisions. You need to identify who will lead the work, understand the problem you're trying to solve, determine who needs to participate, and engage the learners and employers who will ultimately use what you build.

You can build the world's most technically impressive LER ecosystem, but if employers don't understand it, learners don't use it, or it doesn't solve an actual problem, congratulations on your very expensive technology project.

The technology matters, of course. But the technology should serve the use case, not the other way around.

For a deeper look at those five phases, the LER Implementation Roadmap walks through what happens at each stage and the kinds of questions teams should be asking along the way.

Figure out what kind of help you actually need

One of the hardest things about being new to this work is that you don't know what you don't know. You might need help engaging employers, choosing technology, building your team, creating a budget, designing credentials, thinking through interoperability—or some combination of all of the above.

The mistake is thinking you need to figure it all out at once.

Instead, figure out where you are right now and then look for the person or resource that can help you answer the next question. That's one reason I organized LERs for Normies around the actual stages and questions that come up during implementation.

There's a glossary for when everyone starts speaking acronym, implementation resources for figuring out what comes next, and tools for specific challenges like budgeting, employer engagement, and evaluating vendors. Think of it less as The Definitive Encyclopedia of Everything LER and more as a resource you can turn to when you're thinking, Okay, I'm here. Now what?

Find your nerds

This may be the biggest thing I've learned after four years in this space: you aren't supposed to do all of this yourself.

If you're a workforce leader who deeply understands your community but couldn't explain the technical architecture of an LER if your life depended on it, that's okay. Find someone who can. If you're a technologist who can talk interoperability all day but doesn't deeply understand the workers the system is supposed to serve, find someone who does. And if you're an employer who knows exactly which skills matter on the job but nothing about credential standards, that's valuable expertise too.

The goal isn't for everyone to know everything. It's to get the right knowledge around the same table.

That's what I've seen make this work successful.

So, for my fellow normies...

I created LERs for Normies because it's the resource I wish someone had handed me when I walked into Badge Summit in 2023. It won't turn you into an LER expert overnight, nor is that really the point. It will help you get oriented, understand the language, figure out which questions to ask, and find resources for the part of implementation you're actually working through.

Download LERs for Normies here.

And if you've been sitting on the sidelines because everyone else seems to understand this stuff better than you do, don't let that be the thing that stops you. The people best positioned to lead this work are often the ones who understand what their communities need and are willing to find the people who know the things they don't.

You don't have to be a nerd to do LER work. You just need to know when to call one.

INCLUSIVITY

How digital badges can signal support for neurodivergent learners

About four years ago, I started my learning journey in digital accessibility, enrolling in training and attending events so I could better understand the experiences of people navigating systems that weren't necessarily designed with them in mind.

One of those events was a student panel where neurodivergent undergraduate students shared what it was really like to navigate higher education. That was when I started to understand something I hadn't fully considered before: the exhausting ordeal of self-disclosure.

The burden of self-disclosure

For many students, receiving accommodations begins with disclosing that they're neurodivergent and navigating their institution's documentation process. Even getting a diagnosis can present its own challenges. Research has documented gender-based differences in neurodivergent diagnosis as well as racial and socioeconomic disparities in diagnostic access.

Then comes the disclosure itself. A 2025 study of autistic college students found that, out of more than 120 students, 83% wished they could disclose without consequences, while 80% worried that disclosure would cause others to see them as less capable.

That was the lose-lose situation students described on the panel. If they disclosed, they risked being stigmatized, judged, or perceived as seeking special treatment. If they said nothing, they were left navigating an environment that might not work for them and risked being judged as incapable when they struggled.

I was already a few years into my work with digital credentials, so I started wondering: How could digital credentials help make a difference here? I didn't immediately know the answer, so the idea simmered in the back of my mind until last year.

Turning an idea into action

The opportunity came in fall 2025, when I began developing my capstone project for my Master's program in Learning Design at Arizona State University. I created the Essentials for Supporting Neurodivergent Students training module, with faculty and staff earning the Neurodivergence Ally digital credential upon completion.

The idea is simple: instead of always putting the responsibility on students to initiate a difficult conversation, the credential gives faculty and staff a way to proactively signal, I'm willing to provide the support you need to succeed.

The training centers on three areas: understanding terminology for interacting with neurodivergent learners, identifying and dismantling common myths and stereotypes, and applying Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to create more inclusive learning experiences.

A credential obviously can't guarantee that someone will be a perfect ally or replace individualized accommodations. What it can do is make support more visible before a student has to ask for it.

Practical ways to support neurodivergent learners

Designing inclusive learning experiences can sound complicated, but in practice, much of it comes down to building flexibility into the experience from the beginning. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers a framework for doing exactly that.

Here are three practical places to start:

• Provide Flexible Presentation: When using videos, provide accurate, human-proofread transcripts. This allows learners who struggle with auditory focus or concentration, including some ADHDers, to read at their own pace and revisit sections as needed.

• Offer Multimodal Submissions: Allowing students to submit a structured video or audio response instead of a traditional essay can remove barriers for learners who struggle with written expression while still assessing the same core knowledge.

• Chunk Complex Tasks: Break multi-step processes—like setting up software or navigating course tools—into explicit, step-by-step checklists. Clear chunking can reduce executive functioning demands and make progress easier to track.

What's useful about these approaches is that you don't necessarily need to know which students are neurodivergent to offer them. You're building flexibility into the learning experience before someone has to disclose something personal and request a workaround.

Want to go deeper? CAST's UDL Guidelines offer more practical ways to apply the framework.

Support for neurodivergence in the workplace

If your professional environment isn't a university campus, the same principles translate well to the workplace.

Consider a virtual meeting. Instead of requiring everyone to speak up, allowing team members to contribute through chat, reactions, shared documents, or follow-up comments gives people flexibility in how they participate while still valuing their input.

Onboarding is another area where relatively small changes can have an impact. Between activating email, navigating a new office, setting up two-factor authentication, and learning unfamiliar systems, it's easy for any employee to feel overwhelmed. Breaking those processes into clear, step-by-step checklists reduces the mental load for employees who may struggle with executive functioning while also making onboarding easier for everyone else.

The point isn't to create a completely different workplace experience for neurodivergent employees. It's to give people more flexibility to choose what works for their individual needs and preferences.

When inclusive design works for everyone

That's ultimately the lesson I've taken from this work. Supporting neurodivergent people doesn't always have to begin after someone discloses a diagnosis or asks for an accommodation. We can design learning and work environments with more flexibility from the start, while still recognizing that some people will need individualized support.

The Neurodivergence Ally credential is one way to put that thinking into practice by giving faculty and staff an opportunity to signal support before a student has to ask for it. But the same principle can show up in much smaller ways: a transcript, an alternative way to participate, or simply a checklist that makes a complicated process easier to navigate.

At the end of the day, designing for those in the margins makes things better for everyone. The more support we can build into our environments from the beginning, the fewer barriers people have to encounter before receiving it.

Sometimes the best support is the support that comes before the ask.

BY THE NUMBERS

Student loan debt is back on the rise

$1.863 trillion in student loan debt is currently owed by Americans, a 3.17% increase from Q1 2025. The average federal borrower owes $40,467, and 42.6 million Americans carry federal student loan debt. That means roughly 1 in 8 Americans is currently carrying federal student debt.

Source: Education Data Initiative: Student Loan Debt Statistics

KNOWLEDGE

What to read, watch, and listen to this weekend

📚Read: The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines by Matt Beane

AI can make us more productive, but what happens when efficiency removes the experiences that actually teach us how to become good at our jobs? Beane looks at how people develop real expertise through challenge, complexity, and connection—and how AI and automation are disrupting that process. A fascinating read for anyone thinking about skills development in an AI-powered workplace.

📺 Watch: How Do You Prepare for Jobs That Don’t Exist Yet? by Michelle Weise + Jon Youshaei for TED

Career paths are getting harder to predict when technology keeps changing the jobs themselves. Workplace expert Michelle Weise and creator Jon Youshaei talk about how to make your skills visible, navigate career uncertainty, and prepare for opportunities you can’t necessarily name yet. A good watch for anyone thinking about what career readiness actually means in the age of AI.

🎧 Listen: Voices of Student Success: It’s Never Too Late to Go Back to College from Inside Higher Ed

We talk a lot about getting people into college, but what about helping them come back? ReUp Education CEO Terah Crews joins Inside Higher Ed to talk about why students stop out, what brings them back, and the barriers that make returning harder than it needs to be. A good listen for anyone thinking about learner mobility beyond the traditional, linear college journey.

FOR FUN’SIES

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